Building Weekly Digest: 8 July
Building Magazine
The UK's leading magazine for construction professionals featuring the latest industry news, expertise and intelligence.
It's been a week of political crisis. The prime minister resigned, but only after most of his ministers had deserted him, including the housing and construction ministers, while Michael Gove was sacked as housing secretary - and another one appointed as Johnson said he would stay on in a caretaker role until the Conservative Party elects a new leader. Away from politics, we have an exclusive interview with Mace construction boss Gareth Lewis and have been keeping an eye on the latest cost pressures affecting the industry. Take a look at all this and more below.
What do all the political changes mean for the construction and housing sectors?
It certainly has been a tumultuous week politically to say the least! It all really kicked off on Tuesday evening when the resignations of chancellor Rishi Sunak and health secretary Sajid Javid triggered a mass exodus of ministers including construction minister Lee Rowley and housing minister Stuart Anderson. In fact there were more than 50 members of the government that resigned in less than 48 hours. Then Johnson sacked housing secretary Michael Gove who had earlier called for the prime minister to resign. By Thursday morning Johnson's position had become completely untenable - with the PM confirming he would resign later that day. While Greg Clark has been named as Gove's replacement and Marcus Jones has been made housing minister, no one know for how long, and there so far has been no word on the construction minister role. But what does that all mean for the sector? Concerns are growing over a potential hiatus in housing and planning policy while a new leader is elected, and the subsequent permanent ministerial team appointed. The turmoil in government leaves the status of a number of recently announced policies, such as the introduction of housing association Right to Buy, and the use of benefits payments to finance mortgages, as well as Gove’s re-working of planning reforms in doubt.
Interview with Mace's construction boss Gareth Lewis
The Battersea Power Station team are rightly very pleased to have reached practical completion this week - and so we were invited to interview?Mace's construction boss Gareth Lewis at the site. He clearly enjoyed showing deputy editor?David Rogers?around, and photographer?Tom Campbell?has got some great shots up on the rooftop with those iconic chimneys in the background. Lewis talks about the construction management approach taken on this job, but the discussion goes much wider into the considerable inflationary challenges facing contractors. Yes, it's about pricing carefully, but he also mentions a "duty of care" to suppliers, clients and future projects - by which you could read "don't dump risk on those who can't afford it and will go under". An interview worth reading.
Latest trends and prices data dashboard update
Soaring materials prices, rocketing energy costs, the tightest construction labour market in years, a volatile housing market and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine - all these pressures are contributing to some of the toughest trading conditions facing construction firms - so we are tracking them in our construction trends and prices dashboard. Definitely worth a look to keep an eye on all the latest pressures!
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And while you are at it - we also have a new cost model for distribution warehouses, where?James Morrison and Gary Marshall of Aecom consider how the industry is responding to the challenges of inflation, as well as materials and labour shortages and provide a cost breakdown of a logistics centre.
What's coming up?
Next week we are running a session on what the Part L changes mean for the sector where we will discuss topics including what Part L is and why it matters, a summary of the changes effective from June 15 and who they apply to, and the role of digital technology for Part L compliance. The session will take place at 2pm on 14 July and is free to attend. You can?register now.
And why not pop the below dates in the diary:
Don’t let short-term pressures deflect us from our carbon goals
The current political turmoil is a huge concern for businesses, but?Mark Farmer?makes the very good point that short-term problems too often mean we take our eye off the very difficult longer-term structural changes needed in the industry - and in his view one of the toughest and most important issues to tackle is how to drive out embodied carbon from projects. He says: "At the heart of a move towards more holistic consideration of whether we build, what we build and how we build is a big shift in mindset, education, competency and the supporting underwriting markets. We firstly need industry-wide and government-supported uniformity in how we are going to measure and value carbon – something that we currently do not have." Lots of very important questions in his piece for?Building Magazine?today - if you can tear yourself away from the Westminster drama we recommend you read it.